A refreshing and unpretentious book that is like no other.
So What? Magazine
A hairdresser in a bookshop!
Revealed in the columns of the Eclaireur in 2010, hairdresser and teacher Anthony Galifot not only wields scissors and a razor (his passion), but also a pen!
L’Eclaireur
Anthony Galifot proves with humour the fact that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. A hairdresser and master barber by profession, he has just had published a collection of short stories by Atalante that mischievously upsets preconceived ideas about his profession.
“You’re only a hairdresser”! Anthony Galifot avidly takes up this snap judgement thrown at him one day and uses it to start his unusual stories, then dissecting it page after page wherever his humour and imagination takes him.
Pascale Vignali, So'Chic
Two interviews with the author:
Anthony Galifot is a hairdresser and a teacher from Nantes. Fascinated by literature, Anthony Galifot has had published by L'Atalante Autour du Fauteuil (Around the chair), his first collection of short stories. Part fiction, part reality, this is a voyage to the core of the profession and our culture, and quite a few people may well recognise themselves in it. Not without a shudder. Suspense guaranteed.
Coiffure de Paris: Anthony, this summer you published a collection of short stories. What made you take this tortuously difficult path?
Anthony Galifot: One day I wrote a little story about a hairdresser in Asia for Coiffure Info, the National Federation of Hairdressing (FNC) magazine. I drew inspiration from an Asian school that I have in my collection of photographs on hairdressing salons of the world. I found it a lot of fun, so I wrote two or three more stories. I had a friend read them and he advised me to send them off. Then, little by little and with a lot of hard work, writing became easier – Elles is an example, published in the Eclaireur des Coiffeurs. I presented it at the Saint-Nazaire Festival in 2011 and I was awarded first prize in the short story category. In September 2011, I sent my short stories to Atalante. They asked me to write more and finally in December 2011, I signed an author contract with them.
CdP : What is your principal source of inspiration?
A.G.: You always put something of yourself in your writing. So there are things I have experienced in the salon. Hairdressing is a world where creativity is ever-present; you see masses of things, if only in that your customer changes every half hour. Every time they come they bring their own world with them and enrich us with their life stories and experiences. That’s the biggest encyclopaedia there is. So I built some stories around what people had left behind when they left the chair. I also use everything I see around me and so the themes are very different. I do a lot of research. That allows me to get really inside the character. There is even a short story where I put myself in the place of the customer. To write it, I went for two months getting my head shaved in salons, and I found out a lot. For another story, the one on the psychopath, I went to see a doctor for a consultation!
CdP : How do you write your stories?
A.G.: I have to enjoy them and the ending must be unexpected. I plan the story, I write it and I wait one or two days before writing the ending which generally comes naturally. It must, in every case, have an element of surprise. A short story is like the blow of an axe.
CdP: In Autour du fauteuil, we pass in turn through the worlds of a bride, a tough cookie, a psychopath, and an inventor of a haircutting machine. Is there an implicit message in the fifteen or so short stories you have published?
A.G.: Let’s just say that writing has enabled me to take a step back from my profession. It’s a way of looking at oneself from a distance. An ironic and slightly sarcastic version of hairdressing.
CdP : You are a bookaholic. Who are your favourite authors?
A.G.: I love Pierre Bordage, who I have often had conversations with and who has inspired the way I write. And also Frank Herbert, Dan Simmons or Isaac Asimov - science fiction writers.
CdP: Can you tell us a little more about yourself?
A.G.: For ten years I had a salon near Nantes. Then I became an independent teacher for salons, the Artisan-hairdresser Centre (CAC), the FNC and the Scotto di Cesare School in Vannes. My speciality is a mixed razor cut. I am also a master barber and studio hairdresser for fashion shows and shoots.
CdP : With this first book, do you feel like a writer?
A.G.: No, I don’t consider myself as a writer. Writing about hairdressing combines both my passions, but I am essentially a hairdresser. Writing is another passion and I devote myself to it at night. So, when I have a story to write, I can spend up to nine hours at a stretch at my computer to get to the end.
CdP: Do you think you will publish other collections of short stories?
A.G.: I’m still writing for pleasure, and, if there is another book, it mustn’t be just a commercial venture. For the moment, I’m still getting a lot of ideas, I put them down on paper and we’ll see. I’m going to be at the Mondial Coiffure Beauté (MCB) in September to sign my book. As I’m travelling throughout France for the CAC, it’s quite possible that with my editor we will be organising book-signings in the towns I will be visiting. When you embark on an adventure, you have to see it through to the end.
Bénédicte de Valicourt, Coiffure de Paris
Is it difficult to keep cool in a hairdressing salon?
Sometimes, yes! The kid that wriggles about while his parents take no notice, a telephone call that goes on for hours, the lack of appreciation - but most of all the impatience of certain customers. The worst is when you’re going on holiday and a customer calls to book an appointment and exclaims “You’re going away for three weeks? But what shall I do?” And they’re the only holidays you’re taking all year!
What would push you over the brink? Almost to the point … of killing someone?
The 6.30 pm customer who arrives a half an hour late without apologising. You say that it’s going to be difficult because you’ve got people coming and they reply “That’s all right, I can wait”!
Reading your collection of short stories, one comes to realise that a hairdressing salon is a dangerous place. And not only for the customers…
Well I suppose a maniac could take our scissors or our razor and do us in… But I think the most dangerous person is really a husband who doesn’t like his wife’s hairstyle.
What is your most frightening memory?
Having to put my fingers down the throat of someone under the dryer who had taken an overdose, and having to slap her face to keep her awake while we waited for the paramedics… I thought we were going to lose her.
The most enjoyable?
Shaving the head of a kid whose mother had wanted to play at hairdressing with some clippers: he arrived with his hair looking a frightful mess. It was brilliant to see how ashamed the mother was!
How do you envisage hairdressing salons of the future? Has reality caught up with fiction?
Technology is developing so fast that everything is possible today; my automatic styling machine in Geek is perfectly feasible!
Isn’t hairdressing really a religion?
Yes, in a way, as we have our own gurus!
The worst mistake made by an employee or an apprentice?
The customer who wants a medium length clipper cut and the employee who forgets to adjust the clippers…
The best moment ?
Well there are so many. Perhaps this one. Having done a young girl’s hair for fifteen years, then looking after her for her wedding day and wanting to make her as pretty as possible. But the best of all is perhaps when you see her come in as a proud mother with her first child in her arms and you recognise the familiarity of expression of the child you used to know.
Your plans for the future?
Continue to enjoy myself, to shock and communicate, but especially to make people react – positively or negatively, it doesn’t matter: in our profession it’s the ignorance and indifference that is so destructive. As Stephane Amaru says, it’s the “wow” effect you have to achieve!
Any wants?
To have a salon with no mirrors in it, so that the customer has to discover their new hairstyle in windows, shop windows or rear view mirrors!
Eve Laborderie, L'Eclaireur Plus
